Moore: Power of communities: self regulation

Interestingly, communities are actually quite interesting self-regulating bodies in many ways. So if you go back and look at eBay, for example, eBay is a really interesting case history in terms of a community self-regulating itself. Obviously, eBay realised... and the principles of eBay were based on honesty and openness and trust. I trust you as a person when we are transacting that you are going to have the goods in the way you say they are and I trust you that you are going to pay me the money that we have agreed is going to be the price. Now, what happens is if you are behaving fraudulently then people start talking on the eBay message boards, so I think there is a really interesting sense of self-regulation.And it is quite interesting about the role of state within all of that and rules and regulations, whereas when you watch people... And I think that within any community you always get people who are more prolific, there are others that are prepared to kind of sit more back, but I think that if you look at mankind as a whole, yes, we are very social animals and that is the thing, obviously, that we are saying in the book.Communities are not a new thing, they are a very old thing, but what technology is doing, is kind of releasing that in a more powerful way. But then you look at what are the basics of human kind and I think we do self-regulate each other in ways that perhaps people have forgotten.